


How Dark the Night

by stayclassycait



Category: X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Concentration Camps
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-02-11
Updated: 2012-10-08
Packaged: 2017-10-30 22:42:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stayclassycait/pseuds/stayclassycait
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU - Due to strong anti-mutant sentiment across the globe, mutants are rounded up like animals put into concentration camps. Charles and Raven are captured and taken to the largest of these camps, where Charles meets an unlikely ally and the leader of the camp's resistance... Erik Lensherr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Captured

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome! First chapter, woohoo.
> 
> I'm not the first person to think of this as a plot, and I don't claim to be. I'm sure there are plenty of other people that have done this, though I have seen none of those works. Any similarities are coincidental, and I'm not trying to take ideas from anyone. I'm a WWII history buff, so I'll be drawing much inspiration from accounts from Auschwitz, Ravensbruck, and other camps.
> 
> This fiction contains serious violence, emotional trauma, disturbing descriptions/images, and anything else you might possibly expect from a work with this sort of subject matter. Please read with caution.

Charles was woken by the sounds of feet approaching; heavy footfalls crushing the hard, frozen sleet that had covered the ground in the night.

Their pace was brisk and dangerous, and as Charles saw through the crack in the barn door that the sun had not yet risen, he knew it wasn’t the kind farmer’s wife bringing them breakfast. He held his breath as his heart beat began to pick up, thundering in his chest despite his best efforts to stay calm, rational, and ready. He sat up from where he had been leaning against the wall, taking his arm from around Raven and turning slightly to shake her awake.

_“Raven,”_ he whispered, for the footsteps were growing louder and he heard the familiar sound of the screen door on the back of the ranch house slam shut. _“Raven, wake up.”_ He hissed, shaking her again.

“Charles—“ She started, and Charles quickly clamped his hand firmly over her mouth.

_Don’t speak. Change, quickly, into your human form._

He felt the texture of her skin change beneath his palm, and pulled his hand back as he moved to stand, pushing the quilt that had been covering them off of his legs. Raven stood as well, and Charles reached out to wrap the quilt around her shoulders and tugged it taut around her until she gripped the edges to hold it closed.

_Quietly, we’re going to move to the back door of the barn, and leave._

_Charles, what’s going—_

_Raven, you need to listen to me, and if we get out safely, I will explain._

Charles put one arm around his would-be sister, leading her away from the sound of the approaching footsteps. He was careful not to step on the brittle hay beneath their numb feet, and keep his breathing shallow and quiet despite the rawness in his throat. He nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the lock on the doors opposite them rattling, and knew that the farmer that had so graciously housed them was giving them a warning, though to the soldiers, it would only look like an old man fumbling.

Charles quickened his pace, pulling Raven closer to him out of instinct and counting the steps to the small door in the corner of the barn. Through the slats of decaying wood, a strange and eery orange light began to show. The dawn illuminated the clouds of breath spiraling up from their mouths, and Raven’s eyes, shining with fear, as she glanced up at him for reassurance. Charles met her gaze, then pushed forward. The lock continued clanking behind them.  Twenty steps. Sixteen steps. Charles heard the grinding of a key in the tumblers. Twelve steps. Nine steps. Chains being taken from around the old iron handles. Five. Threetwoone

Charles resisted leaping to the door once they were in range, taking his arm from around Raven. He pushed on the door, but it did not budge. He ran his hand over the worn wood to the handle, feeling for a lock,  a latch, anything. He heard the chains fall to the ground with a _whump._ He blocked out the thoughts of the farmer, equally as fearful as Raven’s and laced with guilt and early regret, and thought he had nothing left to lose. There was no use keeping quiet, now, they were going to be taken either way—

Charles threw his shoulder against the door, and Raven squeaked in terror as the entire wall shook. Charles took a breath, then threw himself against the door again, and felt something solid blocking it from opening.

_No no no this isn’t happening_

He heard the hinges across the barn squeal as the doors were thrown open, and the orange glow of the sunrise illuminated the massive space and cast their shadows across the wall before them. There was unintelligible yelling, and Charles gave Raven a meaningful look before slowly raising his arms and folding his hands behind his head.

_Raven, stay calm and follow my instruction_

_Charles they’ve got guns they’ve got guns they’re going to kill us Charles please_

_Stay calm, Raven._

Charles heard boots thudding across the dirt floor, and grunted as he was violently seized from behind, a pair of hands on his arms and another around his middle. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another soldier take Raven into a kind of bear hug from behind. She immediately began screaming and struggling, and Charles closed his eyes and sighed as he was roughly pulled back across the barn.

_Raven, please, stop struggling!_

_No Charles I’m not going to stop fighting they’re going to kill us_

_They are not going to kill us unless we put up a fight! Now STOP!_

Charles could hear even his own voice resounding in her thoughts like someone yelling into a cavern, and the girl immediately fell still in the arms of the soldier holding her. Charles was turned around to face the open doors, and tried to keep pace with the soldiers as best he could, though he couldn’t feel his feet and he had no energy after a night of troubled sleep and weeks of scarce food.

They were brought out into the pasture and the morning light, and Charles was thrown down onto the bed of dead grass before he could even say a word in their defense. He heard Raven being pushed down in a similar way beside him, and as soon as he raised his head to speak, a gloved hand fell down on the back of it and forced his face into the dirt. Charles breathed as best he could against the grass as hands tore at his coat and the legs of his pants, patting him down for any weapons or possessions. Charles closed his eyes again, and tried his best to remain calm.

_These aren’t bad men, they’re just following orders. If we are compliant they will make it easier. If we show we are not a threat they will no longer perceive us as one_

He reassured himself, but his mantra was cut short as the gloved hand twisted in his hair and pulled him back with a brute force unmatched by any that Charles had ever experienced before. He cried out despite his best efforts, groaning as he was set on his feet and his face was turned roughly from side to side.

“Oi, is this Xavier? Someone look him up.” The soldier holding him said forcefully from behind his mask. Charles found, to his horror, that he could not read the man’s mind—Couldn’t find even a trace of thought—His eyes travelled up to the metal helmet on top of the soldier’s head, and immediately understood. They’d known about him before they even came.

“Of course it’s bloody Xavier, that’s who we’ve been tracking down for two damn weeks—“ Another soldier piped up, and Charles saw that he was pointing a gun at both of the new prisoners.

“Make sure it’s him!” The one holding Raven said.

“Who’s the girl?”

“Doesn’t matter. They’re going the same place.” Charles’s soldier grunted, holding Charles tightly as if the man might make a foolish attempt at running at any moment.

“It’s him.” Another confirmed.

“That’s just grand.” Charles’s soldier replied, and Charles could hear a strange sort of glee in his voice that deeply unsettled him.

Charles’s hair was released and he sighed in relief even as the soldier took his arms behind his back again, twisting them painfully and leading him back towards the front of the house. Raven cried out and Charles sensed her being led behind him.

“I’m sorry! Please, forgive me! They were going to take my children, and—And burn my home—I’m so sorry! ” The farmer called out, his voice hoarse with what Charles sensed as pain. Charles twisted his head to look back at the weathered old man, still dressed in flannel pajamas, and gave him a meaningful look.

“I forgive you.” He said just loud enough for the man to hear, before they turned the corner of the white ranch house and faced the back of an army truck. The back doors swung open, and hands reached out from inside, taking Charles by the shoulders and pulling him into darkness.

~

“I hear the camps aren’t all that bad. I mean, they certainly aren’t home, but they’re sort of like prison. Three square meals, bed and shower and all that.” The boy across from him said, his Brooklyn accent almost too thick to understand.

“Don’t believe everything you read, son. If it’s from that government, it’s propaganda. And propaganda is downright lies. Them posters just make people feel better about throwing us in there.” A man said from the corner of the train car, his face hidden in shadow.

“No, really, I saw pictures—“ The young boy protested, but was interrupted by a young woman who had been crying for the entire trip.

“You really think that if we’re being taken there like this, it’s ‘not all that bad’?” She demanded, her voice wavering. The Brooklynite was silenced.

It was true, Charles thought. They had all been herded into train cars, barely large enough for everyone to sit down comfortably, all made of bare wood with floors covered with a sprinkling of hay.

_This is how cattle are transported_ , Charles thought. _We’re nothing but cattle to them._

Silence fell over the car, save for the rumble and clacking of the wheels beneath them. Occasionally, they would hit a rough section of track, or take a too sharp turn, and everyone in the glorified box would be thrown about violently. Each of these episodes were followed by ‘I’m sorry’s and ‘excuse me’s and Charles couldn’t help but wonder how far manners really went in these situations.

“How do they know we couldn’t just bust outta here, anyway? Don’t they know what we are?” The Brooklynite piped up, and Charles heard a few groans from the passengers around him.

“I hear they keep the really dangerous ones in special cars, or else transport them in trucks.” Another boy said, and as Charles looked at him, he couldn’t have imagined him being a day over fourteen. He was in the best light of anyone in the car, and Charles saw that he was covered in grime, with sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. It had been quite some time since Charles looked in a mirror, but he absently reached up and touched the side of his own face, wondering if he looked as gaunt as that boy.

“Who’s to say I’m not dangerous?” The Brooklynite snorted.

“The government, apparently. But I say I’m with them on that one.” The boy snapped back.

“You little—“

“Please,” Charles spoke up, his voice hoarse from lack of use and thirst. “Let’s not argue. This is a miserable enough situation as it is.”

There were murmurs of agreement, even from the Brooklynite, and a seemingly permanent silence fell over the car once again. The car thundered across the tracks, and it seemed to Charles that the journey would last an eternity. He tried his best to block out the constant buzz of _where are we going what’s happening how long until those doors open_ around him, trying to turn his thoughts inward. He made a sort of quiet place inside his mind; a white room with walls like water, blocking out the trouble around him. He let his eyes drift closed and tried to doze despite his discomfort.

As he reached that timeless state between consciousness and unconsciousness, he felt the train slow beneath him and then finally stop, the screeching of the brakes slicing into his warm, white and quiet room like a knife through cloth. He awoke with a little jump, and heard yelling outside the doors and also stirring in the cars on either side of him. He rubbed his eyes furiously and exchanged glances with many people around him. Some people in the car began to shakily get to their feet, legs weak with a long time of sitting in such uncomfortable positions. Others, like Charles, remained on the floor, but everyone was watching the doors nervously.

They remained there for a long time, the silence covering the inhabitants of the car like a thick wool blanket. Charles was beginning to think that the train was only stopping for fuel, and they would continue on their journey soon, but the harsh yelling seemed to be getting closer just as the footsteps had only a few days before. Just as those standing were beginning to settle down and make room to sit again, there was the clanking of a latch being undone and the doors rolled open.

“Up! Up! Out, out, out!” A disembodied voice roared from the other side of the mass of bodies in front of Charles. He scrambled to his feet as Raven did beside him, brushing hay off the backs of his pants and trying to shake the blood flow back into his legs as they threatened to give beneath him. There was a surge for the door, and Charles patiently waited until the majority of the passengers had made their way out of the car before he moved forward. He and Raven were of the last ones out, and he jumped down off the edge of the car’s floor and onto a platform. He turned to help Raven down, but before he could even take her hands in his, he was roughly pushed back away from the car.

Raven stumbled down onto the platform, looking dazed and quite confused. Once her feet were firmly on the ground, she turned towards Charles, taking one step towards him before a soldier knocked her back towards a crowd of women forming a few yards away from Charles.

“CHARLES!” She screamed, her eyes wide with fear. She struggled against the soldier pushing her, despite the threatening tone he was using with her.

“Raven!” Charles cried out, moving forward to take her back when a soldier’s arm was thrown out in front of him. Charles ran directly into it, and the wind was knocked out of him as his chest collided with the sleeved muscles of the soldier.

“CHARLES! CHARLES!” Raven continued to shriek as she was pushed back into the throng of people. Charles saw tears streaming down her face, and began to feel his eyes sting as well.

“Raven! Raven, I’ll find you later on! Stay calm! Please, just stay calm!” He shouted back at her as loudly as he could, still catching his breath as best as he could. He watched as she disappeared into the sea of coats and heads, and felt an ache deep in his chest that had nothing to do with how the soldier had stopped him from getting to her. He promised her that he would find her, and he thoroughly expected to, even though he knew nothing of how he would do it. He turned around, and found himself surrounded by men, some of them arguing loudly with soldiers but most staring forlornly down at the ground. Charles spotted the Brooklynite from his car nearby, and pushed past faceless strangers to get to him. He grabbed the sleeve of the boy’s coat, thereby catching his attention.

“You said you knew about the camps. I mean—What did they say?” Charles asked desperately, glancing over his shoulder as if he could still see Raven from here.

The Brooklynite looked at him, shrugging his shoulders in a dismissal way. “No, man. I didn’t know nothing.”

“What do you mean?” Charles asked, panic beginning to rise in his chest again. The boy looked at him, then pointed up to three towering black chimneys across the camp, looming over them like angels in the sky. “What? What does that—“ Charles was cut off as someone pushed him forward, and he stumbled forward. By the time he regained his footing, however, the boy was gone, and the small crowd of men was moving into a sort of jumbled line in a sad imitation of order. He took one last chance to scan the platform for Raven, but he knew he couldn’t have picked her blonde head out of the crowd even with a bird’s eye view.

The line moved forward abruptly, and Charles wondered if it was under order. There were so many soldiers yelling around them in all different languages, he couldn’t have imagined any sort of organization coming from this chaos. Still, he kept his eyes forward and made sure not to fall out of the line, trying his best to take in all the surroundings he could as they passed them. He picked out several buildings, though they were all made of identical brick, and he didn’t think he could distinguish between any of them. He wished he could have at least told which direction north was, or even what town they were close to.

The men were filed into one of the larger buildings built from what looked to be unpainted cinderblocks, and as Charles squeezed in through the open metal doors, he noted that the interior room looked much like a locker room. He found room to stand and then remained still, blocking out the frantic thoughts surrounding him as best he could and trying to listen for some orders. There was too much talking and shouting, really, and Charles did his best by watching the actions of those around him. At first, everyone seemed to just be milling around, shouting out names of relatives and friends in a desperate attempt to be reunited with them.

There was a sudden, sharp blast of noise like a siren, and Charles cringed and instinctively threw his hands over his ears. The sound lasted for a good ten seconds before cutting off as abruptly as it had begun, and Charles reluctantly pulled his hands away to hear the soldier shouting from where he assumed the door was. It sounded like he was speaking Spanish, then French, then repeating the order in German, when Charles finally heard English. Though the order was in his native tongue, he could hardly believe it—They wanted them to _strip?_

_Stay calm, be compliant._

He reminded himself, watching the other men exchanging unsure glances before hesitantly beginning to shed their coats and scarves. Charles obeyed as well, shrugging off his coat and throwing it onto the bench beside him. He yanked his scarf from around his neck and peeled off his gloves, throwing them on the pile as well. He pulled several sweaters over his head, and by the time he got down to the last thin layer of cotton, a long sleeved shirt that hadn’t seen the light of day from beneath his layers in quite some time, shivers racked his body like jolts of electricity. He clenched his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering as he pulled the last shirt over his head and fumbled with the button on his trousers, his fingers so numb that he could have sworn he saw them turning blue. Just as the soldiers began shouting again, he’d taken off his second sock and was left naked, just like the men around him. He wrapped his arms tightly around himself as if he could brace himself against the shivers that still overcame him.

The men moved forward slowly, and despite the extreme temperature and their unsure situation, Charles still felt quite obscene, all of them being packed into a room naked like this. He tried to push the feelings out his mind, however, reminding himself that they very well could be walking to their deaths. Still, he heard the murmur of ‘showers’ around him, and though it could very well only be a rumor made to comfort themselves in this situation, Charles believed them. What else could he do?

As they moved towards the doors opposite the entrance, Charles could feel the anticipation building up in the pit of his stomach. What was in there? Showers or death? Would it just be the outdoors, where they would be thrown into the snow and forced to stay there until they froze to death? Would it be another train? Would they tell him where Raven was?

_Raven_.

For a moment, he’d forgotten all about her, and he immediately felt guilty. Was she going through the same thing as him with the crowd of women she’d left with? If he was this scared, he could only imagine what sheer terror she was feeling. Separated from her only guardian, in this cold and harsh place, surrounded by strangers and the soldiers they’d spent months running from. He tried to think of how he could find Raven, or even seek out her mind in this crushing ocean of thoughts, find her familiar voice in the midst of all these people screaming their thoughts as if God would be the last one to hear them…

Charles put a hand to his forehead and had to take a deep breath as he felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his temple. He was trying too hard, pushing himself beyond his limits.

_I have to stay calm._

He repeated to himself as he moved through the narrow doorway, immediately met by a guard holding a gun and animatedly pointing to one of the lines to the right of him. Charles stared at him blankly, then understood, turning to his right and moving to the third one down. He looked back to the soldier for some kind of approval, but the man had already moved onto directing the next urge of human traffic. Charles looked ahead again, leaning slightly to the side to see ahead of him. He saw soldiers ahead, not holding guns but scissors. Well, some of them were holding scissors. Others were holding something that Charles couldn’t quite make out, but from the cries of pain in front of him, Charles couldn’t imagine they were anything pleasant or even harmless.

He kept his breathing even and repeated his mantra to himself as steadily as he could, keeping his eyes on the back of the head of the man before him. He let his mind wander again, to Raven, and despite his not knowing where she was or how she was doing, he tried to lay a blanket of _calm_ over the minds in the distance, though he couldn’t find hers specifically. Maybe, by some chance, she could recognize his presence, and would know that he was alright.

Charles came back to the present as his turn came, and the soldier to his right holding the scissors grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled his head down. Charles sucked in a breath through his teeth as the blades tore across his scalp, scraping his skin and making it sting in the cold. Charles’s head and shoulders were jerked around as the soldier repeated this process until almost all of his scalp was bare or bleeding, letting go only to take care of the tufts leftover at the base of his skull and around his ears. To his left, the other soldier grabbed his wrist and extended his arm forcefully. Charles looked down as the soldier lifted a blade, and Charles hissed as it was pressed to his skin. The soldier made quick and crude work of it, etching the identifying number into his arm. He added something below it that Charles couldn’t identify before blood oozed out and began to drip down his arm. The soldier dipped his gloved fingers into what looked to be a pot of ink, thoroughly covering them before dragging his hand roughly across Charles’s rough cuts. Charles couldn’t help but cry out in pain, the ink stinging as if someone had poured alcohol into his wound.

Once Charles had a moment to fully realize the pain searing in his forearm, the soldier with the scissors threw him forward by his shoulder to make room for the next incoming prisoner. He clamped a hand over his marking in attempt to stem the blood flow and also the pain, baring his teeth as he moved forward. At the other end of the room, he was handed what looked like a neatly folded pile of rags, and he took it without comment and moved on past. As he shook the fabric loose from its folds, he found that it was nothing more than a sorry excuse for a uniform. Still, he was freezing, and hurriedly pulled the shirt over his head and stepped into the pants without ceasing moving forward. As soon as he was dressed, he wrapped his arms around himself again, searching for any clue as to where he should go next.

“I gotta get out of here!” He heard someone yell to his left, and immediately turned his head. “C’mon, move! I gotta get out! I’m fucking—I can’t—“ The Brooklynite from before stumbled through the crowd and in front of Charles, eyes wide with desperation and fear. He looked like a trapped animal. As he tried to move past, Charles grabbed him by the shoulders.

“No, don’t—Don’t try to run, they’ll shoot you—Just keep moving, they’re not going to kill us!” Charles said to him, trying to sound as confident as he could. Still, the young man tried to push past him, twisting about in an attempt to free himself from Charles’s grip.

“I gotta—I can’t stay here—So many damn people—“

“Stay calm!” Charles replied, and he could see that they were already catching the attention of many. A familiar mask moved towards them through the sea of bodies.

“You fucking stay calm!” The Brooklynite screamed, pulling his arm back to hit Charles in the face.

“No, just stay calm!” Charles cried, reaching up to catch the man’s wrist when the soldier arrived at their little scene. “He’s having a panic attack, there’s no fight—“ He began to explain, but he only saw the butt of the soldier’s gun zooming towards him before he was thrown back, the room pulsing around him and then disappearing completely.

~

“Hey. Hey, wake up.”

Charles turned his face towards the sound, and immediately became aware of the intense aching between his eyebrows. He groaned aloud, and felt someone’s hands on either side of his head, holding him still.

“Open your eyes.” The voice continued, its tone authoritative. Charles moaned, for as he tried to obey, he found that his eyelids could barely open wider than slits and it felt as if his eyeballs themselves were bruised. Still, as he stared above him, he could make out the faces of many surrounding, and one particularly handsome one directly over him. He felt someone lightly slapping his cheek with a warm hand, and he lifted his hand to push it away.

“Telepath. You’re a telepath, right?” The handsome face demanded, his tone hardening with each word he said. He sounded urgent, and somewhat desperate.

“My name is Charles Xavier. And yes, I’m a telepath.” Charles croaked. “How did you know…?”

“Your tattoo.” The man answered coolly, grabbing Charles’s wrist and lifting his arm up. In the dim light, Charles could see the numbers in his skin, surrounded by dried blood and smeared ink. Below them, however, was a curious little symbol that resembled an I crossed with a U, and Charles couldn’t imagine how any of this would tell the man about the nature of his mutation.

“Get up, Telepath. We have some shoes for you.” The man said, leaving Charles’s field of vision and disappearing into the blur around him.

“What—What does that mean? Who are you?” Charles demanded, turning his head in an attempt to follow where the man was going. He returned only a moment later, however, a tin cup in his hand. He crouched down beside Charles, sliding his arm gently beneath the telepath’s head to prop it up as he put the cup gently to his lips so that he could drink.

“My name’s Erik Lensherr. And we’ve been waiting a long time for you, Telepath.”


	2. Taken

“There’s another telepath here. But she’s on the other side of the camp.”

“The other side…?”

“The women’s side. She’s powerful, but not powerful enough to help us here. But now that you’re here…”

“Now that I’m here?”

“Now that you’re here, we can make a real plan. One that will work this time.”

Charles could barely make out Erik’s gaunt face in the cot next to him, even as light from the floodlights crept in through the narrow slits in the concrete walls towering over them. They were really sad excuses for windows, Charles thought, and he wished he could stand and just see outside. He had been here only two days, expertly hidden by the other men in the barrack when soldiers in their gas masks strolled through for wake-up call and random checks. This was only to let him heal, Charles now understood—Soon he would leave the building every morning and come back as the sun was setting, just like the rest of them. He didn’t know where they went during the day, and he wasn’t sure he cared to find out.

“I don’t understand. If you’re all mutants, how do they keep you in? Everyone can do something—“

“It depends on the mutant. But most of us get injections—“

“Injections?”

Charles heard Erik growl quietly at the interruption, and Charles quickly silenced himself. He trusted this man, this new ally, but he sensed a great, simmering anger within him waiting like a sleeping bear, and Charles did not yet know what would awaken that beast.

“Yes, injections. I don’t know what’s in them, but they suppress their powers, somehow. Many are simply too weak to provide any kind of resistance—Our rations are miniscule, and we work during the day. And if any individual shows a sign of rebellion, or even a small group—Well. And the most powerful ones that they can’t control are either killed upon arrival. Unless they’re useful to the force, of course. Then they’re restrained, and used to find and capture more mutants. That’s what’s happening to our other telepath across the camp. They have some sort of… Machine, I don’t know. It allows her to find mutants across the globe.”

Charles let out a little breath as he felt his stomach twist itself in knots at the thought. Such violence, and such a hopeless place. He folded his arms tighter across his chest, blinking and straining his eyes to see Erik’s face in the dim light.

“This is madness. I mean… It’s just like…”

“The Jewish Holocaust, yes.” Erik finished his sentence, his voice barely above a whisper. Charles felt painful memories stirring below his surface thoughts. It occurred to him that this man, this… Rebel leader of sorts; that this man had seen all of this happen before. The situation was familiar to him, and he lived through it once, and he thoroughly expected to live through it again.

“I’m so sorry.” Charles whispered back, feeling tears welling in his eyes as the other man’s silent pain intensified. Abruptly, the memories were cut off, and Charles saw the other man’s shoulders raise and then tense.

“Why?” He demanded gruffly.

“I just—I had no idea that you were—A survivor, that’s so very—“

“I don’t want your fucking pity.” The man snapped, and Charles immediately ceased talking.

There was a long silence between them, and Charles chewed on his bottom lip as he waited for Erik to speak again. He listened to the snores and mutterings of the sleeping mutants around them, and for a moment, became lost in their unintelligible sleeping thoughts. It was comfortable there, almost like daydreaming…

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to you tomorrow. We have some friends in high places, but even they can be fed lies. The MRD knows who you are, if only because of how powerful you are and how long you evaded capture,” Erik suddenly spoke up, sounding reasonably calm again. In fact, as he mentioned Charles’s long time on the run, he almost sounded amused. “Best case scenario, they continue to underestimate you and put you in a normal working position. Realistic… You’ll be replacing Frost. If not aiding her.” He continued, his tone grave again.

“Frost… The other telepath?”

“Yes.”

“And she…?”

“I told you. They use her to find other mutants.” Erik answered impatiently.

“…Alright.” Charles responded, trying his best to keep the fear out of his voice. He tried to tell himself, how difficult could finding mutants using his telepathy be? He’d done it before, picking them out of crowds nearby, even approaching a few. But the way Erik said it, it sounded like something much more sinister. And in this place… Charles had no doubt that it was something much worse than just strolling around flanked by two soldiers and pointing at mutants in the street. Still, maybe it would mean that he could find Raven. If he met this woman, this Emma Frost, surely she could find Raven on the women’s side, tell him that she was okay.

“But where do you go?” Charles suddenly asked, pushing his hopes for finding Raven aside as the curiosity entered his mind.

“I use my mutation for the camp.” Erik responded vaguely, and Charles saw him move onto his back on his narrow cot.

“And what is your mutation?” Charles prodded, eager for an answer. It occurred to him that this man seemed to know quite a lot about Charles, but Charles knew next to nothing about him.

“Don’t concern yourself with it. It’s probably sometime around midnight. Wake up call is at sunrise, you’d best get some sleep.” Erik responded, and Charles could tell that this statement was the end to the conversation. Charles huffed, becoming somewhat impatient with this man’s mysterious, secretive behavior, but knew it was best not to push it.

He let his eyes drift closed, suppressing a shiver and stretching his numb toes as best he could before willing himself to fall asleep, trying to keep the thoughts of what the camp outside held for him out of his mind.

~

Erik was right about being woken at sunrise. As soon as a trickle of sunlight filtered in through the narrow slits near the ceiling, there was the boom of the heavy metal doors at the end of the barracks being thrown open and the heavy footfalls of soldiers marching down the aisle than ran down the middle between the rows and rows of bunks. They yelled and slammed the butts of their rifles against the metal frames of the beds, their voices muffled by the protective masks over their faces. Charles didn’t think he’d ever been woken so brusquely and unpleasantly. Though he knew that he should have jumped out of bed with a new urgency, he was far too used to being able to sleep on his own schedule, whether it was in his bed at home or in the hay loft of a barn with Raven while they were on the run.

He heard scuffling as the mutants around him got out of bed and onto their feet, and only groaned inwardly. After a moment, he felt someone strike him hard across the face and grab him by his upper arms, heaving him up with a tremendous strength.

“Get up, you lazy idiot!” He heard Erik bark from above him, and Charles opened his eyes to see the man’s face in front of his, contorted with rage.

“Alright, alright.” Charles agreed, wrenching himself out of Erik’s grip and getting to his feet. The concrete floor was freezing cold beneath Charles’s bare feet, and he suppressed a shiver. Charles wrapped his arms around himself tightly, hunched over as the chilly air pricked at his skin and his empty stomach twisted uncomfortably beneath his crossed arms. Somehow, Erik stood tall next to him, as if he were some monument invincible to things like temperature and hunger. Charles envied him.

Charles spotted the shoes that Erik had promised him upon his arrival, and quickly reached down, dragging them over in front of him and stepping into them. They were slightly small for Charles’s feet and whoever had broken them in obviously had an odd gait, but Charles decided it was vastly superior to walking around barefoot—As he noticed many of the men were. He wondered what sort of trouble Erik had to go through to get these shoes for him.

The soldiers yelled out yet another order that Charles couldn’t understand, but before he knew it, all of the other men were stepping out from between the bunks, heading towards the wide double doors at the end of the narrow building. Soldiers stepped in front of or behind the crowd, never inside of it, and Charles felt Erik grab his arm once more and was steered into the group. This mass of people was considerably calmer and lacked the chaos of those from the incoming trains the day before—They moved with a sort of reluctant efficiency that Charles couldn’t help but appreciate. His head still ached from the incident with the Brooklynite the afternoon before.

He silently wondered if the boy was even still alive.

The men were led outside and to the outer wall of the barrack, where they were instructed to line up shoulder-to-shoulder against the smooth concrete wall. When they had occupied the space, another row was formed ahead of them, and then another. Charles hadn’t thought the building was even large enough to hold this many men, until he realized that there were many coming from other barracks next to theirs as well.

The soldiers began walking up and down the rows with clipboards in their hands, shouting out numbers and work assignments. Charles shivered and watched the clouds of steam rising from his mouth as he breathed, following them all the way up until they evaporated and disappeared against the backdrop of the cloudy grey sky. He found himself daydreaming, wondering if the sky looked this grey back in England… He ached for his second home…

Erik shook him again. “Pay attention.” He instructed gruffly, grabbing Charles’s wrist and lifting his forearm. The skin was red and raw from the tattoo Charles had received the day before, and he couldn’t help but hiss in pain as Erik’s fingers brushed over it. Still, Charles now realized that he didn’t even know his number, and quickly looked over it, trying to commit it to memory.

733167

He chanted it to himself silently as he watched the soldiers march up and down the rows of men, listening for his particular sequences of numbers. After about ten minutes, it was quite apparent that they wouldn’t be getting around to Charles any time soon, and he leaned back against the wall and folded his arms tightly over his chest again in a sad attempt to brace himself against the chill.

After what felt like an eternity, a soldier approached Charles directly, clipboard held in front of him. He reached out and grabbed Charles’s arm with the same urgency that Erik had, looking over his scarring number and then back to his clipboard. “733167, with me.” He ordered, his accent foreign and his voice muffled by the protective mask he wore. Charles wished he could see the soldiers’ eyes—The masks made them look like giant insects. All Charles wanted was a little sign of humanity.

Charles thought it hardly necessary, but the soldier that had addressed him called over another man in uniform, and they each took a hold of one of his arms and steered him towards the center of camp. Charles shot a terrified glance in Erik’s direction, and Erik only shook his head and gave Charles a look that said: _don’t do anything stupid._

Charles allowed himself to be led away from the barracks and the only person in this entire camp that wasn’t a soldier, seemed to both have their wits about them and didn’t have a dead, hopeless look in their eyes. Where were they taking him, anyway? Why had he been separated from the rest of the group?

He remembered Erik’s words the night before, about the other telepath in the camp and what kind of work they put her up to. That must be it, then. Erik’s predictions had been correct, and Charles was being taken to help the government find more mutants to round up and bring to this horrible place. He couldn’t help but wonder if it had been this woman that was the one that found he and Raven—Their location had been so remote, he couldn’t have imagined the force finding them any other way.

As they walked, Charles tried to take in everything he saw—Every building faceless cinderblock building, the roads and paths branching off the one they were on, the tall fences lined with barbed wire that hummed with electricity, the movements of other groups of prisoners travelling around the camp. He wished he could memorize the layout and make a map in his mind, for being in such a hostile place with no sense of orientation or location made Charles twice as uneasy as he would have been otherwise.

Still, Charles felt that it was simply too much to take in, though he caught glimpses of routes and significant places in the minds of the prisoners passing him. He hardly dared to make sense of any of it, though—It took far too much time and energy, two things he didn’t feel he had much of in his present situation.

Charles was taken to an especially large building; it was a behemoth of a structure next to all the other warehouses and barracks that surrounded it. It was painted white, which was about all the detail Charles could take in before he was dragged inside. As soon as the doors had opened in front of him, the pungent odor of antiseptic and infection overpowered Charles’s sense of smell, nearly bringing tears to his eyes. They walked through a big, open room cluttered with hospital beds and frenzied nurses. Charles found himself surrounded by gaunt, dying prisoners, and their internal pain and pleas for death came at him from all sides, echoing in his mind and bombarding him with the agony—

Charles began to find it difficult to breathe, and realized he was hyperventilating. Why would they bring him to this terrible place? He felt his stomach clench, and he was sure that if he had had anything to eat since the day before yesterday, he would have thrown up and passed out. He thought of Erik, standing tall beside his cot that morning. Erik, who survived the Holocaust was determined to survive this nightmare as well. Erik, who seemed to think that Charles was part of his big plan that was somehow the only way to save those wasting away in this camp. This motivated Charles to at least keep his consciousness, and Charles screwed his eyes shut in concentration to block out the barrage of thoughts and feelings coming at him. He felt dizzy, but at least his mind was his own again. Quiet, though uneasy.

Charles heard another pair of heavy metal doors open in front of him and he was dragged through those as well. He opened his eyes and found a long hallway with flickering fluorescent lights overhead, lined with metal doors on either side. It still smelled faintly of antiseptic, but it was nowhere near as strong as the room behind him had been.

The odd trio continued down the hall until the soldiers stopped in front of one of the doors on the left side of the hallway. The one to Charles’s right reached down to his belt, pulling out a keycard and sliding it through the sensor beside a keypad on the door. There was a loud click as the bolt shot back, and the same soldier reached out and pushed the door open. A miniscule room was revealed, containing nothing but a chair bolted to the floor, a tall lamp on a swivel that Charles had seen many times in dentists’ offices,  and a metal tray on wheels that Charles was sure was only used to hold tools during surgery.

Though he put up no resistance, the soldiers held tight to his arms and forced him down into the chair, securing straps attached to the chair around his wrists and ankles. Charles felt panic began to rise from the pit of his stomach, but forced himself to remain calm. As long as he was docile and cooperative, nothing would go wrong. Everything would go smoothly. He took a deep breath and then released it as the masked soldiers turned and left the room, the door slamming shut behind them.

Charles wasn’t sure how much time he spent in that tiny cell of a room. There were no windows and certainly no clocks, so all he had to go by was the soreness in his lower back from being seated in such an uncomfortable chair for so long. He was still exhausted from his lack of sleep the night before, and found himself dozing off now and then and jumping awake as soon as his chin hit his chest or his temple fell on his shoulder.

Finally, a nurse entered. Charles could only identify her as a nurse because of  her gloved hands and the armband over her uniform— The same ill-fitting dull grey shirt and pants as he wore.  A soldier entered the room behind her and stood by the door, gun clutched tightly in his gloved hands. The nurse carefully took the cover off the tray beside Charles’s chair, revealing a multitude of instruments that Charles was only vaguely familiar with and a great many more that he had never seen before. He also saw a few syringes and small bottles of medicine, the labels of which he could not read. Panic began to spread across his chest, and Charles took another deep breath.

The nurse picked up a pen light and leaned over Charles, waving it over both of his eyes before turning it off and setting it down. Next, she reached for a tongue depressor, pulling Charles’s jaw down and pressing it on the back of his tongue as she turned on the lamp overhead and angled it so that she could see down his throat. She tossed the wooden stick into a wastebin below her tray, and then carefully placed her fingertips on either side of Charles’s head to tilt it back. She checked his nostrils, then his ears, waved a finger back and forth in front of his eyes, and asked him a few simple questions. Charles felt rather like he was back in college, getting his annual physical to play on the rugby team. It seemed so ridiculous and routine, in this environment.

She listened to his heart and breathing with a rather old looking stethoscope, probed at his thyroid glands with cold fingers. After several more routine and thoroughly tedious tests, she seemed to be finished giving him a clean bill of health, and picked up one of the syringes from her little metal tray. She lifted one of the glass bottles of medicine, piercing the top with her needle and pulling the plunger back. After tapping the side to get rid of the air bubbles, she leaned down towards Charles again, swiftly sliding the needle into his neck and emptying the syringe. Charles tried to remain still but still cringed, and remained tensed until the woman pulled the needle out and pressed a cotton ball to the injection site. After waiting a few moments for his blood to clot, she dropped the cotton ball into the waste bin and seemed to be finished, stripping off her gloves and leaving the room. Charles shifted uncomfortably in his seat, left to the stifling silence again, now with the soldier standing like a statue in front of him. Charles feared another long wait, but another soldier appeared at the door. He was released from his restraints, and before he could even wonder where they were going _this time_ , one of the soldiers pulled out a black bag and slipped it over Charles’s head while the other pulled his hands behind his back and pulled a thin strip of something around his wrists.

Charles could not read the soldiers’ thoughts (he wondered if it had something to do with their helmets), and so he was left thoroughly disoriented. He sensed being led out of the room, and turned to the left. So they were still walking away from the main room that Charles had first entered. Charles tried to keep a mental note of their direction. A long walk, then a right. Another right, and a left. The soldiers’ boots squeaked against the tile underfoot. Charles heard doors being opened, and felt the chilly outside air blow through the thin fabric of his clothes.

 _Stay calm. Be compliant_.

He brought up his mantra from the day before, though was hardly comforted by it. He tripped over descending steps as they walked outside, and heard an engine idling. Someone told him to step up, and he stuck his foot out in front of him obediently, searching for something to step on for a moment before finding it. He climbed up into what he thought was the back of a truck, and was instructed to sit down. He did this as well, and the soldiers released him and he heard doors being closed again.

_I must be in the back of some sort of… armored truck_

He thought, shifting uncomfortably against the bonds around his wrists. He felt the truck lurch forward, and thought he might try to sense what direction they were travelling in before he realized just how disoriented he truly was. He didn’t even remember what directions they had taken in the hospital, from the tiny examination room to whatever driveway they were leaving now. He resigned himself to concentrating on trying to find a comfortable position to sit in and not being thrown against the walls every time the truck took a sharp turn.

The journey was thankfully brief, and Charles was only slightly jostled by the time the truck slowed to a stop, the engine died down, and after a pause, the back doors were thrown open again. Charles remained still as a soldier climbed up and retrieved him, lifting him to his feet by his arm and walking him to the edge of the truck. Charles hesitated before jumping down, and quickly felt a soldier on his other side once more. He heard the doors slammed closed and they were off again, the new terrain beneath Charles’s feet rocky and uneven. Were they out in the country? Were they going to execute him out here? Had he secretly been kidnapped by an outside resistance and was being returned home with a fake, human identity?

Maybe that was wishful thinking.

Doors opening again, though this time they sounded different. Closer to the ground, somehow. A soldier warned him to watch his step, and as Charles was led down a descending flight of stairs, he realized it must be some sort of storm shelter, or underground bunker.

Charles tripped down the seemingly endless staircase, wondering just how far underground they were going. He was pulled to the right, directed through another door, and sat down again. The bag was removed from his head and the binds on his wrists cut, and he found himself—In another tiny concrete room. Joy.

He was seated at a small table this time, however, on top of which sat a bowl of what looked like faintly green water and a small plate containing a slice of bread and half a potato. His stomach growled as he smelled the bland meal, and with a cursory glance to the soldiers, he immediately reached forward and picked up the bread, stuffing the entire slice into his mouth as if he’d never see it again. It was stale, but Charles was far too hungry to care. Once he had swallowed the dry mass, he moved onto the potato, which was hot enough to burn his mouth but certainly not enough to prevent him from eating it anyway. It was gone just as quickly as the bread, and Charles moved to the bowl of water. As he lifted it to his mouth and allowed it to pass his lips, he quickly realized that it was some vague, lukewarm and sad interpretation of cabbage soup. Just as with the stale bread, however, he ingested it as quickly as he could despite how disgusting it tasted. Judging by the emaciated figures of his bunk mates that morning, he sensed that it might be the best meal he would have for a while.

As soon as his dishes were cleared, the soldiers advanced again, lifting Charles from his chair before he even had time to wipe he mouth on his sleeve. The bag was dropped over his head again, though the bindings, thankfully, were left off. He was led out of the room and through what felt like a maze of hallways and staircases. He wasn’t sure how far underground he was, let alone what direction he was facing anymore. At least it was relatively warm down here.

At long last, they came to a halt. Charles heard a card being swiped and numbers being punched into a keypad, and then the sliding and click of a bolt. Doors were opened, he was pushed through, and the bag was finally taken off of his head again. Charles found himself in what seemed to be some strange laboratory. The room was large, but perfectly circular, and the walls were lined with all sorts of blinking, buzzing machinery and computers that Charles had never seen anything even resembling before. In the center of the room stood a slightly raised circular platform just big enough for someone to stand on, a steel railing wrapped around it. Above the platform was what looked to be some kind of helmet, with all sorts of tubes and wires running from it up to the ceiling and out to the computers surrounding in bundles and tangles of colored wire covers. A woman altogether unfamiliar to Charles, wearing a clean and relatively well-fitting grey uniform stood on the platform and below the helmet, and she opened her eyes as the soldiers entered the room. Her hair was not cropped short, like the prisoners’ that Charles had seen, but fell to her shoulders in blonde waves. As he looked to her face, Charles wouldn’t have described her as healthy-looking, but she certainly seemed to be altogether better off than the inmates he had seen since he arrived.

“I’m so glad you’re here. I’m exhausted.” The woman announced casually, as if she had simply gotten tired of holding something that she was about to pass off to Charles.  Charles thought the computers and helmet looked far more sinister than that, but her calm attitude and relatively clean appearance and calm demeanor comforted him somewhat.

“You’re Emma Frost?” Charles blurted out, earning him an icy stare from the woman.

“Yes. And you must be the new Telepath everyone’s going on about.” She replied coolly, ducking out from beneath the helmet and stepping down off the platform gracefully. “I don’t particularly care about how powerful you are, just as long as it means that I don’t have to do all of this work all of the time anymore.”

Charles was slightly taken aback—For someone that Erik seemed to speak highly of (had he spoke highly of her, or had he just talked about her as if she were important to his big plan? Charles couldn’t remember), Emma was very… Abrupt. Charles thought that was a polite enough word for it.

“Well, new Telepath—“

“My name is Charles. Charles Xavier. I wish everyone would stop calling me ‘Telepath’.” Charles continued, just now seeming to notice the men in lab coats in the room as they approached him. The soldiers let go of Charles, but remained by the door.

“I don’t particularly care for your name.” Emma snapped, stepping off to one side and holding one hand out as if welcoming Charles to the machine. “When we’re sure that you won’t have a seizure and die, I’ll take the time to learn your name, Telepath.”

“Seizure and… What?” Charles asked nervously, but he was already being ushered towards the platform by one of the scientists. He began to resist, but reminded himself of his ‘be compliant’ mantra and tried his best to stuff down the fear and step up to the machine with just a little confidence. Nothing was explained to him, no warnings besides Emma’s were given before the helmet was lowered onto his head, and Charles could feel his heart thundering in his chest, and he began to feel quite dizzy as if he was going to lose his recent meal and faint. Emma came around to stand in front of him, a glint in her eye as she watched Charles carefully. She faintly reminded Charles of a lioness watching her prey. This comparison didn’t make him feel any better.

Charles took a deep breath, and then another, just waiting for this thing to turn on, send electricity into his head and fry his brain. He had no idea what it was going to do, or what it was supposed to feel like. He closed his eyes and placed his hand on the rails in front of him, trying to brace himself for the worst. His only warning was the hum of the machine as it seemed to wake from a long slumber, and a nearby scientist giving a countdown.

Charles didn’t hear him say _‘activate’_ as a tremendous, blinding pain that Charles had never dreamed of experiencing before surged through his skull, and a blood-curdling cry of agony tore through his throat.


	3. Used

In just two weeks, Charles had fallen into the miserable routine of the camp. They were woken at dawn, taken out into the freezing cold and lined up like soldiers. Roll was called, and work assignments were given. Two soldiers approached Charles, took him by the arms, and guided him away from the others. The shortcut through the hospital and to the tiny examination room were only taken that first time, and now they took Charles all the way to the back gates of the camp before putting the bag over his head and lifting him into the back of the truck. He’d counted the seconds one morning, trying to estimate how long the ride lasted—He came to an average of about twenty minutes. He wish he could have estimated the mileage, but he had absolutely no idea how fast the truck was travelling. Still, he knew that the bunker was a ways away from the camp—So far that he could barely even feel the massive presence of mutant minds. In fact, the bunker seemed to be far away from any kind of human thought. The soldier’s helmets prevented Charles from reading their thoughts, and the only other presence was Emma’s, which was, of course, a strictly forbidden psychic territory. She had her thoughts even more heavily guarded than the camp.

Once Charles was at the bunker, he was served breakfast. He understood from what others at the camp told him that their breakfast consisted of weak coffee and watery broth, and so he was thankful that he was allowed bread and a potato along with his bowl of broth. Erik had commented on how well Charles had kept most of the weight he’d arrived with, and Charles said nothing of the special breakfasts. He sensed that it might anger Erik. After a few days, Emma had begun to have her breakfast with Charles as well. They couldn’t speak in front of the guards, but after a couple of mornings in silence, they’d agreed to open a very protected channel through which to communicate telepathically. At first, Charles had found Emma outrageously unpleasant, but he soon grew used to her icy and sharp way of things and had come to think of her as something like a friend.

Charles sat with her now, staring down at his soup as he dragged his spoon through it. Emma picked at her bread with her fingernails, lifting the smallest pieces to her mouth and chewing on them for a long time before moving onto the next morsel. Charles thought of how disgusting they would seem to some of the mutants back at the camp—Provided with what was practically a feast and barely touching it. The truth was, both he and Emma had learned that it was impractical and unwise to eat before the session with the machine. One would be sure to throw up out of the sheer agony that it caused, and they both knew that when their work was done, they would be fed the same meal again. Emma had accepted it as a fact of the job, but Charles felt ungrateful. If the soldiers had not been watching them intently, he might have hidden the bread and potato somewhere in his ugly grey uniform to give out at the barracks later.

_“I wish we could give this food to someone else, we never eat it.”_ Charles voiced across the channel, wanting to just break the silence with Emma for a distraction from the dread filling him.

_“Don’t be ridiculous.”_ She quickly responded, never looking up from her bread.

_“When people are starving, it seems like such a waste.”_

_“There are always starving people. Did you box up your dinner table scraps and send them to Africa every time you were too full to finish?”_

_“That’s different—“_

_“Shut up. I’m sick of all of this humanitarian nonsense you’ve got going on in your head all of the time.”_

Charles sighed quietly, forcing himself to lift a spoonful of broth to his mouth and drink it. It tasted like salty cabbage, as usual. Charles’s stomach churned.

_“I’ve had a headache for four days now. I don’t think I can do this today.”_

_“I’ve been doing it for three months. You’ll survive.”_

_“How did you end up here, anyway? I mean, how did they catch you?”_ Charles had wanted to ask Emma this for quite some time now. Emma seemed to be marvelously intelligent, and certainly like the kind of woman who couldn’t be caught so easily. She was ruthless, quick, ambitious. Not the type to allow themselves to be outwitted by a mutant-hunting government.

_“If you must know, I volunteered a week after the Act was passed.”_ Emma replied without missing a beat. She didn’t seem in the least bit ashamed of the fact. Charles swallowed hard.

_“You volunteered?”_

_“I knew that if I submitted myself to the government and offered them what I had, I would receive much better treatment than if they had to hunt me down. And I do. I eat meals like this, instead of what they eat in the dining hall. I sleep on a real bed, which I have to myself, in my own room connected to the women’s barracks. I receive real medical attention, instead of what goes on in that hospital. And when I’m not here, I can wander around the camp as I please.”_

As Charles contemplated what she had said, he realized that this was far more clever than he had originally given her credit for. She had known that she was going to be captured either way, so why not make it easy for herself? Charles looked up from his soup, watching Emma for a long time before looking back down.

_“That was very wise of you, Emma.”_

_“I don’t need your affirmation, Charles.”_

They were silent again for a while.

_“What has Lehnsherr told you?”_ She suddenly asked. Occasionally, Erik would use Charles to give messages to Emma, who would, in turn, relay them to Erik’s people on the women’s side of the camp. It was very efficient, though Charles couldn’t help but feel like a bit of a postal service. For the greater good, he supposed.

_“Nothing. Just to be ready.”_

_“He always says to be ready. I’ve been ready for over a month now. I’m ready to leave.”_ Emma said bitterly, now dropping morsels of bread into her soup and watching them float.

_“He has a plan. I promise.”_ Charles assured her, always willing to stand up for Erik.

_“Of course he has a plan. He always has a plan. It’s just usually insane.”_ Emma retorted. Charles turned this statement over in his mind a few times, then dropped his spoon in his bowl with a loud clatter.

_“Charles.”_ Emma added, her mental voice softening considerably.

_“Emma.”_

_“Be careful around Erik.”_

Charles hesitated. What kind of warning was that? He looked up to meet Emma’s gaze, searching her eyes for some kind of glint of trickery. Though he knew that Emma was a master of deceit, he saw nothing but sincerity, and his stomach turned again.

_“What do you mean?”_

_“I mean, you’re so quick to defend him. You’ve gotten very close, and you trust him.”_

_“I do trust him.”_

_“Please, be careful around him.”_

_“But, why?”_

_“He’s a mad man.”_

_“But… He’s my friend.”_

Emma’s gaze hardened. The soldiers suddenly came to life from the corners of the room, stepping forward to lead the two telepaths away from the table they shared. Emma stood compliantly, but Charles still sat, staring at her with confusion.

_“Erik Lehnsherr isn’t anyone’s friend, do you understand me?”_ Emma said harshly, so much that it rang in Charles’s mind like an echo. She closed the channel linking their minds and turned, the soldier standing close at her side as she left the room. Charles felt someone’s hand around his arm, and he was roughly pulled to his feet and out of the room. He couldn’t bring himself to care, Emma’s words still buzzing around in his mind like an angry wasp.

_Be careful around Erik_

_Erik Lehnsherr isn’t anyone’s friend, do you understand me?_

~

Charles hadn’t eaten much at breakfast, but as the machine powered down, he could feel the watery broth and two bites of potato rising in his chest. He swallowed it back down, determined to retain as much nutrition as he possibly could.

“You’re going to have to do better than that, Xavier,” One of the scientists below the platform said, never looking up from his controls.

“I’m sorry,” Charles apologized without thinking. It was true—He wasn’t able to reach nearly as far today as he had been in the days past, for the simple fact that he was exhausted and distracted. He couldn’t find the focus or the energy to locate the mutants that these people wanted.

Every day, he tried not to think about how he was locating these people to be sent to their misery and then deaths. This was for his own self-preservation, which Erik told him was necessary to liberate the camp. Charles believed him. He promised himself that every soul that he found through the device, he would free from this horrible place soon after they arrived. He swore it.

“Let’s try again,” Another one of the operators said gruffly.

“Please, no, I don’t think I can—“ Charles turned his head to look at Emma, who stood beneath him with her arms folded. She gave him a warning glance, and Charles understood that any more refusal to perform his duties would be met with punishment. He closed his eyes and took a deep, shaky breath. He wanted to fall to the floor and cry out of sheer exhaustion, but kept his composure. “Just… Give me a moment, please.”

He shifted beneath the odd helmet, reaching out and holding onto the rails and taking a few more deep breaths to prepare himself for the pain. When he was calm and sure that he was ready, he lifted his right hand to signal the operator. There was a brief pause, and then the pain shot through him like an electric bolt. It was mostly concentrated in his head, creating a sharp pain that made Charles feel as if someone had thrown an axe right into his skull. But then it travelled down his spine like liquid fire, and spread through his limbs and all the way to his fingertips. Instantly, he was aware of every mind in a hundred mile radius, each one glowing like a lantern in the night. Thoughts and images radiated from each one, some of them passing him like the headlights of passing cars, and some remaining in his vision, floating, somehow briefly aware of his presence before disappearing again. The experience was agonizing and exhilarating at the same time—Charles had never experienced such power from his mutation, but also knew that he was never meant to. It felt like the machine was a wire trying to pump ten thousand watts of energy into the two hundred watt bulb that was his brain.

He could feel it as someone turned up the intensity, allowing him to leave the hundred mile radius and enter a two hundred mile one. Three hundred. Four hundred. At five hundred, Charles was vaguely aware of crying out, but the distance continued to increase. Six hundred. He felt dizzy. The lights were passing him so quickly that they were just glowing streaks across the darkness. He was losing his focus, unable to locate anything at this distance. He willed himself to concentrate, to sort out the white noise of thoughts and feelings and find what they wanted him to look for, but it was impossible. The pain at the base of his skull intensified, and Charles was beginning to feel the physical world again—The churning of his stomach, the weakness in his legs, dizziness.

“STOP!” He screamed, and he heard the loud sounds of the machine powering down around him. He opened his eyes, the bright lights of the laboratory blinding him. “I can’t—I just—“ The vomit reached his mouth before he could stop it, and Charles doubled over the railing as he heaved, clear bile and the few bites of potato splattering across the floor. There were groans from the scientists surrounding, but surprisingly not from Emma. Usually when Charles failed so miserably, she chastised him, insisting that if she could do it that he could too. Not today—She seemed to sense the true exhaustion within him, and climbed up onto the platform. She helped him stand up straight again and then step down from it, holding him firmly until the soldier had taken him.

“I’ll take over from here, Xavier.” She said coolly, stepping underneath the helmet. Even in this act of kindness, her voice sounded condescending.

Charles tried to thank her, but couldn’t seem to find his voice. As the soldier held him beneath his arms, Charles watched her, standing proud as she let her shining gold hair down from its bun and pulled the helmet down over her head. In his weak and mentally drained state, she looked almost like an angel, with all of those bright lights above her.

His view of Emma was obscured as a young scientist stepped in front of him, already holding a pen light. Charles recognized him, only because he was always here and usually looked upon Charles with a bit sympathy. Charles squinted to see his face clearly—Ah, yes. He was very young, with brown hair and glasses. A little handsome, maybe. Charles searched his mind, and to his surprise, found that he was a mutant—He tried to say something about it, but couldn’t seem to form words. The light was clicked on and shone in his eyes, and Charles tried to turn his face away.

“You’re done for today, Xavier,” The boy announced, though not unkindly. With this statement, Charles allowed himself to fall unconscious.

~

Charles woke in his cot in the barracks. Erik was standing over him with a grim look on his face. Charles barely had time to look around and see that the rest of the barracks were empty before Erik leaned down and seized him by the front of his uniform, teeth bared.

“Emma told me that you _failed_ today, Charles,” He said in a harsh whisper. Charles flinched, not having expected this reaction. Sympathy, yes. Even cold questioning, he would have been prepared for it. But Erik was actually _angry_ with him?

“I didn’t fail. I was too tired, Erik, I couldn’t—“

“Don’t you realize that our survival depends on you? And if you can’t do your job, you’re worthless to them. And they’ll kill you,” Erik cut him off, his grip on Charles’s shirt tightening.

“Erik—I hardly think they’re going to kill me because of what happened today—“

“They don’t even need a reason, Charles, they’ll kill anyone—“

“Erik, you don’t understand—“

“No, _you_ don’t understand—“

“They need me just as badly as you do!” Charles finally shouted, his voice gravelly with sleep. Erik froze, silent. Charles breathed, eyes closing briefly as the dull ache in the back of his head intensified. “Please, Erik. They need me to find those mutants in hiding. Emma can’t do it by herself, and I can’t either. It takes both of us.” Erik seemed to contemplate this, then slowly let go of Charles and stood up straight again. Charles sighed in relief, lying down on his cot again and suppressing a shiver. As Erik turned to face the wall behind Charles’s head, Charles saw clearly the massive black and purple bruise coloring that side of his face. Charles drew in a sharp breath at the mere sight of it, forcing himself to sit up.

“Erik, what happened—“ Charles reached up to touch it, and Erik immediately recoiled.

“Nothing that concerns you, “ Erik said gruffly, turning away so that Charles could no longer see the bruise.

“Did someone—“

“Listen to me, Charles. Everything is going to begin, soon. And I need you to be ready. Are you ready?” Erik asked, staring at the opposite wall as he spoke. His tone was low and empty of any emotion. It unsettled Charles.

“I—Yes, I’m ready,” Charles said unsurely. Erik had always told him that he had a plan, but Charles had yet to hear even the smallest part of it. It was just a vague idea of blood and then escape, to him.

“Good,” Erik replied, a finality in his voice. He turned, striding away from Charles’s bed and towards the doors of the barracks. Charles watched him as he threw open one of the massive metal doors, and only turned away when he disappeared into the camp and they slammed shut behind him, leaving Charles in absolute, silent darkness.


End file.
